Coaches - Rugby Drills Coaching Library

Mike Ford - I Had To Change

Mike Ford Discusses the background to his coaching philosophy and why he had to change when he was coaching England. All coaches should be open to change in order to develop their players

Video Transcription

Sign a sign for Wigan in 1983 and you have caught cheese, but you look back away. You were caught back then in the 80s and 90s and it was very much a tell environment where you got told what to do and they didn't do what you got told. You probably didn't get selected coaches involved so much now it's very much player led environments thing. There's player empowerment. You give the players the tools to perform at the weekend, but ultimately they're decide which tool to use and you know, they have a lot of say in how the game should be played and how you should be training. So certainly a battle will be it's a very much a play Led environment and I think that's the difference. We caught his bath never tell we ask questions. We want to know what the players know if I want to know what the players know, I need to ask them are not need to tell them what I think you know, so it's a bit It's pretty much and that's culture at bath and that's culture at bath and we try and fill in the lack of knowledge the players of after saying that the play is then take the reins pretty much for the end of the week. And I'm going to live over the weekend. We as coaches don't need to be enough to after Thursday in the week. It's to open the leaders can easily set the sessions. We just facilitate that so that's pretty much in my experience the biggest change over the over the span of professional career that I've been involved in is away from you've been told to or what to do do this do that. You don't make decisions become robotic. You don't think for yourself to didn't know that the new way of spores and the new edge of think member courtrand England 2009 Six Nations, and I told I told a play where to stand and training and I told him again the day after Because I told him it doesn't nessen. I didn't necessarily confirm that he knew were to stand when he was on his own. I didn't confirm the learning so we went out and play it again silent. It's wicked him. He was in the wrong position and I said to Martin Johnson I said, well I told him where to stand am articles. Yeah. No, I was stood next year when you told him but we're missing a trick. You know, it's not what I'm worried. He's just done the he needs to know what he needs to stand. So I needed to confirm that learning and I never did in from that day. I change my way of coached and it took a while at buff to the players to change the three years ago. We're in an environment where it was a tell environment and they were quite used to it they but now suddenly, you know, the last 18 months of players are comfortable with the questions being asked to understand why we're asking them to understand that it's we're trying to know what their know what knowledge do they have and we then fill in the blanks. He hasn't quite got this Player that's in meetings. But we do that in the training field as well by just throwing in tests every now and again, so it's a defense there and in the middle of it will do an attack in line out or follow doing defense or what. Do you want this second line out here and then vice versa. So we're constantly challenging the players asking questions, you know, we're not we're not fixing it on a Monday morning when we've lost. You know, we're hopefully we're fixing it there and then

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